


Blood on the Ice

by Kablob, mylordshesacactus



Series: Happy Huntress Cinematic Universe [2]
Category: RWBY
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Dismemberment, Faunus!Robyn, Gen, Police Brutality, in which Robyn Hill is a very angry baby socialist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-26
Updated: 2020-02-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:54:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22903531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kablob/pseuds/Kablob, https://archiveofourown.org/users/mylordshesacactus/pseuds/mylordshesacactus
Summary: Then Robin grew angry, for no stripling likes to be taunted with his green years."Now," quoth he, "my bow and eke mine arrows are as good as shine; and moreover, I go to the shooting match at Nottingham Town; there I will shoot with other stout yeomen, for a prize has been offered of a fine butt of ale."Then one who held a horn of ale in his hand said, "Ho! listen to the lad! Why, boy, thy mother's milk is yet scarce dry upon thy lips, and yet thou pratest of standing up with good stout men at Nottingham butts, thou who art scarce able to draw one string of a two-stone bow."Or: The merry adventures of Robyn Hill, fifteen year old street urchin, freelance poacher and doer of odd-jobs, and unofficial champion freerunner of the City of Mantle.
Series: Happy Huntress Cinematic Universe [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1646263
Comments: 66
Kudos: 124





	Blood on the Ice

_Fifteen years before the Fall of Beacon_

* * *

For as much as Pietro genuinely enjoyed his work, it was always a relief to have a slow day in Mantle.

It seemed like a day didn’t go by when there wasn’t someone here in need of his expertise—between the mines and the factories and the Grimm, the rate of limb loss in Mantle was staggeringly high.

Too many of his colleagues just didn’t _understand_. Oh, they all thought it was admirable of him, this pro bono medical work. They just shook their heads in bewilderment as to why he would _bother_ with all the trouble of an airship commute so frequently, and the expense of maintaining medical offices in Mantle of all places—and not even one of the comfortably middle-class sectors, either—when it would still make an immense difference to simply fund the place from afar. He’d trained dozens of students, after all, who could provide perfectly adequate care. He could maintain a charity office in Atlas proper, if he wanted, and provide free care from a place of comfort!

...Well, most of them thought it was admirable. Pietro knew Arthur wasn’t _nearly_ so cynical as he came across. He just got caught up in the work, and his focus and attention to detail were highly valued by the team. But he _did_ get more frustrated than the others. Pietro sighed. It was always unpleasant, arguing with a teammate; and Arthur was right that without Pietro’s stringently blocked-out days dedicated to his outpatient center, their proof-of-concept for implementing hard-light barriers on mobile platforms could have been ready six weeks earlier than its planned completion date.

But that just wasn’t acceptable. This was about more than _just_ providing care. It was about the difference between ensuring the citizens of Mantle had access to functional prosthetics, and ensuring they had access to the _best_ possible prosthetics he had the resources to provide. That privilege shouldn’t be reserved for those with the ability to get to Atlas.

Besides. Even when the prosthetics themselves were identical to what he might have been able to provide from a distance, it _meant_ something to his patients that he was here himself, looking them in the eye, treating them with dignity. So few of them were accustomed to that kind of care.

Part of him couldn’t help but be worried by slow days, though. The thought in the back of his mind that it was calm before a storm, and that the day the storm came would be one that he _wasn’t_ here on. Schnee’s miners had been striking for the last week, which meant that there weren’t any accidents happening in the mines. Perhaps this time the miners would actually win, and there’d be fewer accidents once they reopened, too. More likely, though...well. There was a reason he was still down here regardless.

Stifling a yawn, Pietro leaned back in his chair. The rest of this infernal paperwork—it really did build into a mountain when you weren’t looking—could wait, it was about time he turned in for the night. There was a small bedroom attached to this office, and he maneuvered his chair toward it now.

Almost inevitably, there was a soft thud against the door.

Pietro stopped, listened for any other sounds. Maybe something had fallen down outside. Maybe a bird had flown into it—wouldn’t be the first time.

He crossed to the door and opened it, looking up. “Strange,” he commented to no one in particular. “You know, I really thought that sign was _fixed_ after the last—”

He looked down.

Oh. _Oh no._

Pietro’s first, horrified thought was that someone was trying to make a disgusting statement of some kind by dropping a mutilated corpse at his front door. But though the young figure crumpled on the sidewalk before him lay far too still, their chest was moving slowly. Still breathing, despite the slowly-expanding pool of blood. They must have fallen against the door as they’d lost consciousness, and thank the gods they had—if he hadn’t heard it they might have bled out on his doorstep before he even knew they were there.

Pietro slammed the button on his chair to call the android assistant to carry a patient to the table and leaned forward. “Don’t worry, kid,” he murmured, knowing the teenager likely couldn’t hear him. “It’s all right. Don’t worry, you’re going to be okay…”

* * *

_Some time earlier..._

* * *

Robyn hit the next roof and rolled lightly to her feet.

She took a moment to assess. Adjusted the brace of wild hare tied across her chest, checked the laces on her shoes; after a moment, she undid them and laced them up again, more securely. The utility knife against her calf hadn’t shifted; the compound bow that she’d pawned nearly everything she’d ever owned for was still folded into a small rectangle, strapped tight to the inside of her wrist. 

The last thing you wanted, freerunning the Mantle slums, was something hard and sharp slung along your hip. Or, gods forbid, your _spine._

Tail swishing idly against the back of her knees, she crossed to the edge of the roof and peered down. There were a handful of routes she could take from here, depending…

She made a face as she recognized the two officers blocking the footpath to the lower level.

It could be worse, of course. Crater cops could be _nasty._ It came with being the shit assignment dealt to anyone who’d managed to piss off the system enough. Punishment detail, knock some humility into you. They didn’t tend to appreciate it, and there was nothing in Robyn’s world more dangerous than a wounded ego with a very, very small amount of absolute power. Every so often, even Mantle got a good one—a faunus whose supervisor wanted nothing to do with them, an honest type who’d stumbled into corruption and didn’t have the self-preservation instinct to handle it intelligently, a low-ranking nobody who’d been right when someone else was wrong.

Those were once in a blue moon, though. Most of the time, you just got garden-variety assholes. Less of the dark, dangerous kind of malice, but plenty of petty power-tripping. 

They really, _really_ liked giving out fines, was the thing.

Which, technically, Robyn wasn’t breaking the law. Currently. She had five minutes ago, and she was about to again, but there was nothing illegal about carrying dead arctic hare, there was nothing illegal about her weapons—they weren’t firearms—and there was nothing illegal about having killed the animals in the first place.

Apparently, some kingdoms had to issue _licenses_ for hunting. It made sense when you thought about it, but to anyone in Mantle or Atlas, the whole idea was ludicrous. Assuming the Grimm out there didn’t find you, the cold alone would kill you dead in hours. Robyn had managed, through trial and error and determination, to train something like an active Aura; but even then, the wind chill would strip it away soon enough. A projected Aura meant the cold killed you _slower,_ not _less._ There just weren’t enough people crazy enough to go out on the tundra just for a few skinny hares to be worth regulating.

What _was_ illegal was selling the meat for human or faunus consumption.

It was...look, even Robyn could acknowledge that for once the intent had been pure. Everyone knew that food safety took a nosedive the minute you got out of the nicer parts of Mantle; down here in the crater, you were lucky if your meat had at some point been _any_ kind of alive animal. 

So it was a _good_ thing that there were serious fines attached to selling any kind of animal product with the intent for it to be eaten by anyone sapient, unless it had passed certain required slaughter, processing, and preparation inspections. But some genius up in Atlas hadn’t thought to put in a loophole for people like Robyn selling fresh game, probably because nobody in Atlas had _any_ concept of food coming from a source other than climate-controlled shipping containers. Which meant she was, to use the technical legal term, shit out of luck.

Half the cops down here didn’t care about this kind of thing, the other half also didn’t care but would find a reason to screw you over anyway. The rare decent ones would take pity on you once in a while; she’d once sold a “lucky rabbit’s foot” to a corner guard who clearly didn’t really believe in that stuff. But counting on that was like looking for a needle in a stack of other, sharper needles.

Robyn couldn’t afford to make hunting trips more than twice a month, three if she’d had a _really_ good month. Projecting a self-taught active Aura was draining, and it required more food as fuel than she could usually justify. And this...hadn’t been a good month. She wasn’t about to risk the remaining three hares being taken off her, not when most of these bastards would take one look at a girl with patched clothes and a fluffy tail and assume she was doing _something_ wrong.

No skin off her nose. The shortcut was faster, anyway.

She cinched the brace of hares tight one last time and turned toward the building next door, a long-abandoned administration center several stories taller than her current perch. She took three steps back, bounced on the balls of her feet, and ran.

Pushing off the extreme edge of the roof launched her across the alleyway three stories below; she caught herself with both feet on the windowsill of the admin building and her fingertips between the cinder blocks. It killed her momentum; but she braced herself for a few moments to be sure of her footing, then made a swinging hop to the side and down, repeating the movement on the next window level down. Closer to the corner of the building, she was able to carry her momentum with her this time and grip an overhead strut to swing around the back side without breaking rhythm, vaulting the rail of the fire escape.

Rather than trust the poorly-supported stairs she jumped from the landing and gripped the windowsill above her, swinging her legs to transfer sideways until she could lower herself more gently onto the next landing up, testing the footing.

Better. The stairs themselves had little in the way of support from underneath, but the landing was solid enough to push off from.

A few steps back to the edge of the landing, a careful eyeballing of the distance—she ran a step and a half, jumped to put a single foot on the railing and launched herself into space from there. Left foot pushing off from the railing, right foot planted solidly on the safe wooden top of an electric pole. The next pole was too far to get in a single flying step, but it was also part of the way down into the crater; lower, just enough to let her left foot connect again to propel her forward and toward the next building’s roof.

She didn’t make the roof, not quite, the distance was too much; but she managed to grip the edge and control her impact with the wall, and from there to kick off with the force of it and roll herself back over the lip of the roof without much trouble. 

It was an old, broken-down tenement building, but it hadn’t been condemned just yet. It was a welcome breather, dropping over the edge of the roof to land on the seventh-floor balcony. Then it was just a question of swinging over the edge, dropping to the next one. Rinse, repeat.

She got down to the second story and ditched the balconies; she dropped from a railing to the rusted top of an electrical box, leapt lightly across the alley to kick off a dumpster, and rolled to her feet in an easy stop.

And to think, walking would have taken a whole five minutes out of her busy schedule.

“Well look at that, it’s little Robyn Hill falling from the sky.”

Inwardly, Robyn groaned. Elain Teale, easily in the top five people who Robyn did not want to see right now, leaned against the wall in an alley that had been empty a moment ago. And of course, three of her men in blue bandanas, blocking any of Robyn’s easy escape paths.

Robyn put on her most charming smile. “Miss Teale! Great to see you. Can I interest you in a fresh hare from the tundra?”

One of the goons snickered. “A fox hunting rabbits? That’s cute.”

 _Never heard that one before,_ Robyn thought, continuing to smile brightly. Elain did not return her smile. “Kid, you really shouldn’t be here.”

“I’m just passing through,” Robyn said carefully. “I really don’t mean any trouble, ma’am.”

Elain sighed, pushed off the wall, and came closer. Robyn tried not to visibly tense up as she was surrounded. “Cut the shit, Hill. I know you’re not an idiot, but somehow you’re the only one who doesn’t seem to get how things work down here.”

Oh, Robyn understood _only too well_ how things worked down here. And if she was a miner, or one of the desperate foolish handful of people trying to keep an ordinary business running in the crater, then there wouldn’t be a problem.

Thus far, she hadn’t caused enough trouble or attracted enough attention or been stupid enough to get too involved in _side jobs_ that would put her in direct conflict with any of Mantle’s street gangs. But that margin was closing fast as Robyn got older and more skilled, and as her contacts around the city started coalescing from a vague collection of personal friends who owed her a favor into a much more reliable mutual-benefit network.

None of that mattered right now. Actually, she thought, walking the thought back—she’d be in a much better position if none of it _mattered._ More accurately, none of that was going to _protect_ her. This was Elain’s turf, and Robyn was outnumbered.

“So what’s the deal, then, Robyn?” Elain stopped just slightly too close for comfort, but not so close that Robyn could justify backing away as anything but retreat. “Because I _know_ I told you what would happen if you showed up on my territory again.”

The incredibly illegal sawed-off shotgun slung across her back, and the ‘liberated’ SDC pistols her goons never stopped bragging about, were all that kept Robyn from rolling her eyes. Elain’s _territory_ was about six square blocks of crater, not even an entire district. And she didn’t even do much with that control; but those aqua-blue bandanas weren’t easy to come by, all the same. She guarded her little patch of nothing like a rabid terrier.

“I’m not your enemy,” Robyn said slowly, holding her hands at her sides, palms out. She could get to the knife easier than her bow; but it wouldn’t do her any good, and they’d still be faster. “If you jump everyone in Mantle who’s not affiliated, you’ll run out of recruits pretty fast.”

“Sure as shit not my ally, though, are you? I’m starting to regret offering you a place, you know. Gratitude doesn’t seem like it’s in your blood. No loyalty, either. I know you fast-talked the cops off Sarga’s trail last week, and _that_ cost me a chance to move on his turf. Get it through your head before you get shot—you want to survive down here, you’re gonna have to pick a team.”

“I’m a free agent.” Robyn brushed a loose strand of hair out of her face; it was a tell, but she couldn’t help it. “I’ve never caused you any trouble on purpose, ma’am, you know that. Done you a few favors, actually. You don’t think putting a hit on me’s a little much, just for crossing the street?”

Unfortunately, she realized with a sinking feeling, that wasn’t going to be enough anymore. Every other time they’d had this conversation, Elain had mostly been exasperated. Maybe a little pissed off, but posturing. This time there was something hard in her face that Robyn really, really didn’t like.

“That was cute when you were twelve,” she said coldly. “I don’t let sixteen-year-old punks run around making their living off my territory without paying their due.” She reached out and put a hand on Robyn’s shoulder, gripping firmly. Robyn had time to see it coming—she wasn’t stupid, which unfortunately meant she also knew better than to fight back when she was jerked forward into a vicious punch to the gut. 

“Oof,” observed one of the goons. Robyn, prevented from doubling over into the blow mostly because Elain was still holding her up by the shoulder of her jacket, couldn’t disagree.

After a few wheezing attempts to get air into her lungs, she managed to gasp, “Fifteen.”

It was an important detail. If you were sixteen and you got in serious trouble, it was prison or the mines, your choice. It had been the military, once, but Atlas didn’t want them anymore.

“You don’t know that any more than I do.” Elain ignored the glare Robyn shot her at that little dig. “You got a warning because you’re a kid, and another warning last time because I like you. You’re out of warnings.” Before Robyn could decide whether to risk going for her knife if they were going to kill her anyway, the grip on her shoulder vanished and she was shoved back into the wall. “I catch you here again, it’d better be because you came to join up. This is the last time you walk away.”

There were a hundred things that Robyn wanted to say to her, but instead she nodded firmly. “Understood. Ma’am.”

“Get lost. And hand over those stupid rabbits first, I know you won’t remember this if it doesn’t hurt.”

Robyn’s heart sank. She was getting off light and she knew it, but that didn’t make the loss sting any less. That was fully half of what she’d shot on the tundra today. She shoved the string into the hands of one of the nearest of Elain’s goons, then turned and ran before they could see the frustrated tears that had sprung to her eyes.

Stupid, stupid, _stupid._

Well, there was no point in continuing on to her usual customer in the area _now._ She scrambled up and over a broken-down fence because it was the fastest route off Elain’s turf, and dropped to the other side before realizing the corrugated-steel barrier at the other end was topped with razor wire.

Perfect. Just—perfect. That was exactly what she needed today. And she couldn’t exactly climb back over and find another route, not with _that_ band watching her. They’d laugh themselves sick.

It wasn’t that she was _above_ forcing her way through a narrow gap near the bottom, where it didn’t quite line up properly with the filthy brick on one side. It was just...alright, yes, it was _humiliating._ She’d been freerunning these back alleys her whole _life,_ she should have known better than to not spot her escape route before committing. She should have paid closer attention.

And she really, really didn’t want to know what the hell the grime on the walls was made of, but it was definitely going to stain.

Finally, she was able to wrench herself free on the other side. The fur on her tail bristled with impotent rage, and Robyn made no attempt to tame it. It wasn’t _fair,_ none of this was fair, every time anyone down here took two steps forward there was someone waiting to shove them four steps back.

She aimed a vicious kick at a rusty can of what had probably once been soup, sending it clattering down the uneven road.

Crabs in a bucket. Robyn had worked on a crab boat for a season or two, before she got too tall to scramble under and around the heavy machinery and was unceremoniously booted out and replaced with someone smaller. 

She’d caught up to the soup can. Originally she hadn’t been going anywhere in particular. Now, though...she had to try to make up the loss on those hares, somehow. Sometimes she could sweet-talk her way into a few lien from mining supply stores, where there was usually a backlog of something that the owners couldn’t afford real employees to deal with. At the very least it would be a few hours of access to the minimal heating grid down here.

She kicked the can again, aiming for and hitting a lamp post down the slope. Finding someone reliable enough to actually give her something in return but sleazy enough to jump at the chance of ripping off a desperate street kid wasn’t her favorite source of income.

Robyn thought about those fucking crabs a lot. It was obvious to anyone looking that the bucket was too shallow to hold them, their legs and claws were more than long enough to let them escape. But none of them ever did. When one started to pull itself free, the others would cling to it and drag it back down. Hundreds of stupid, selfish, short-sighted crabs that didn’t have to die, if they’d been able for five seconds to stop sabotaging each other…

She wound up and kicked the can as far as she could, swiping furious tears out of her eyes.

 _“Gah!_ Geez, Robyn!”

Robyn looked up, startled out of her train of thought. Farther down the road stood her friend Midge Lincoln, gingerly rubbing at the spot on his forehead where Robyn’s can had struck him. “Sorry Midge,” she said, “I didn’t see you…”

Her eyes narrowed.

Midge cringed. There was a lot of him to cringe with; he was younger than Robyn but already almost taller, and nearly twice as broad in the shoulders. Mantle slum trash like the rest of them, so there wasn’t an ounce of wasted fat on him, but there was only so much hunger could do to make him anything like small.

“Come on, Robyn,” he pleaded. “You had to know this was gonna happen, don’t—”

“What the _fuck,”_ she snapped, “Are you wearing?”

A very specific green bandana tied around his neck, _that’s_ what he was wearing. Exactly the same as the ones Elain’s crew had, except that they would shoot Midge on sight if they ever saw him wearing it.

“I didn’t have a choice—”

“The hell you didn’t!”

“I’m not _like_ you, Robyn!” She’d backed him into a lamppost without realizing it, and he shoved her back. Not hard enough to hurt, because this was Midge Lincoln for pity’s sake, he wouldn’t hurt a fly, who in their right mind would give him a _gun?_ “Not everyone can go it alone like you can. I’m not smart, and I’m not fast, and I don’t know how to charm people into telling me stuff. I’m _scared,_ okay? It’s just me and Dad. And he hasn’t stopped coughing for two weeks. He couldn’t have gone to work yesterday even if the mines _were_ open, and—they’ll take care of me, Robyn.”

“They’ll use you up until you die for them.” She took a step back, sick. “Midge, you’re not stupid, you know you’re just cannon fodder. They don’t care about you, it’s just—it’s a crab bucket, all of these stupid gangs, they—”

“Yeah, I know.” Midge, for the first time, looked angry. “I’ve heard it a million times. Everyone down here spends all their time fighting each other to keep anyone from getting ahead instead of uniting against _I don’t care,_ not anymore. I’m hungry, and I want to sleep somewhere warm.”

Robyn’s throat closed up. “I know. I know, but—you didn’t have to...it’s not your color, you know.”

She almost managed to imitate a smile, but Midge wasn’t buying it. 

“It was this or a snowflake,” he said, bitter. “So go fuck yourself, Robyn. I’m not going to the mines. I can’t die like that. At least this way it’ll probably be fast.”

Robyn’s shoulders slumped. She couldn’t argue with that, not when Midge’s father was coughing his life out as they spoke. “I’m sorry.” She stepped forward and pulled him into a hug. “I shouldn’t have yelled.”

He hugged back, tight and frantic. “I’d have warned you if I could,” he mumbled into her shoulder. “But I never know where to find you.”

“I’m around.” She squeezed. “I’m always around.”

They pulled apart and Midge sat down on a mostly-clean patch against the wall, motioning for Robyn to join him. She did so, crossing her legs and leaning her head back. Far, far above, the massive bulk of Atlas loomed.

“You’re _thirteen,”_ she breathed.

“Almost fourteen,” Midge corrected her reflexively. “But...yeah, I know. I know everyone thinks it’s stupid. But they’re willing to bring me in even though I’m so young, and I need protection, and...this is the best thing that could have happened to me. It’s the best offer I’ll ever get.”

Robyn’s eyes followed a distant speck—a military gunship, entering one of the massive hangars that clung underneath Atlas like barnacles. “It shouldn’t be.”

Robyn didn’t hate Mantle. Not like most people seemed to. But it was times like this that she came very, very close.

Midge almost laughed. “Robyn, sometimes I think you can actually see the stars up there.”

If that wasn’t the most depressing thing she’d ever heard. Still, for his sake, she tried to smile. “They’re up there, small fry. It’s not our fault we can’t see them.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “That’s _definitely_ Atlas.”

Robyn considered explaining the concept of a metaphor, then decided he still wasn’t wrong.

After a minute, Midge brightened and grabbed her shoulder. “Hey,” he said. “It’s not _all_ crab buckets down here, Robyn. The miner’s strike is still going, really strong this time, everyone says. I know a kid whose cousin has a projector, and she says she saw Schnee on the news the other night and he’s _really_ mad. That’s unity, right? Isn’t that what you were talking about? Have you been down yet?”

“Only once or twice,” Robyn admitted. She _wanted_ to help, but she was no good to anyone dead, and miners on strike couldn’t really afford to trade away what little they’d managed to stockpile for this movement. And she didn’t want to ask, either. Whatever the stereotypes said, Robyn Hill wasn’t about to make off with her neighbors’ hard-won resources, especially while they were already vulnerable.

Midge pointed out, “It’s getting late. People are starting to close shop. Probably you won’t find much before the graveyard shift starts, and they’ve got bonfires going down there, so it’ll be warm at least.”

After a moment, Robyn smiled for real and pulled herself to her feet. “You’re a smart kid, Midge. You’ll be safe, walking down there?”

“Oh, sure.” He spoke with a casual assurance that made her heart twist horribly in her chest. “There’s nobody claiming that bit, not yet anyway. Unless you count old man Schnee.” 

“We probably should,” Robyn said flatly while she gave her tail a quick brush with one hand, cleaning off whatever dirt it picked up from the ground. But she offered Midge her other hand to pull him up. “C’mon, let’s go.”

* * *

It turned out the strikers had plenty of braziers, and nobody noticed two kids squeeze in by one of them. Well, almost nobody—Robyn could practically feel the SDC’s private security staring at her from the other side of the barricade.

Everyone in the crater knew that if there was an armored goon with the encircled staff of Atlas on his pauldron at one end of the street and one with the Schnee snowflake at the other, you ran towards the staff every time. Atlas military and Mantle cops were nasty; SDC guards were downright _vicious._ The kind of people too cruel even for the Atlesian government to employ, and that was _really_ saying something. 

If they caught you on the property they guarded...well, Robyn always gave SDC warehouses a wide berth no matter how tempting a route the architecture offered. She’d heard a lot of stories and didn’t want to find out how many of them were true.

Mine workers were used to functioning in shifts; they ran their strikes just as efficiently. Maybe that was part of why nobody questioned two teenagers joining them, or maybe they just appreciated the solidarity. As it started to get dark, the next ‘shift’ of strikers was starting to show up to let the rest of the picket line get some sleep; but it was still early enough that most of the ‘day shift’ wasn’t quite itching for a break, and their numbers were, temporarily, swelling.

It _was_ warmer down here. And not just literally. Earlier in the week—earlier that day, actually, when Robyn had passed a few streets up on her way out to the tundra—there had been a lot of chanting. At the moment, however, the mood was quieter. There were cooking fires scattered along the line, people setting down their signs for a moment to huddle around and eat; you could feed a lot more people by combining everyone’s scraps of whatever they had on hand into stew than by calling every man for himself.

Mantle understood that. For all Robyn’s frustration earlier—Mantle had always understood that. She was still alive, wasn’t she? The only way anyone made it for long down here was by leaning on their neighbors, and vice versa.

“Lincoln, is that you?”

The tip of Robyn’s tail twitched in surprise as they turned toward the speaker, a large man with a shock of white hair and beard who the other miners made way for.

“Mr. Whitehand, sir!” Midge stood up a little taller, putting him almost even with Robyn. She knew of Gilbert Whitehand; he was older than most people who worked the SDC mines ever managed, and he had the scars and the prosthetic arm to show for it. He also had the reputation; this wasn’t his first time acting as a strike leader, and if things didn’t go well, Robyn was certain it wouldn’t be his last. “Yes, sir. This is Robyn.”

“Robyn Hill,” she supplied, stepping forward.

Whitehand nodded to her and accepted her offered handshake, but understandably was more interested in Midge. “Will’s boy, aren’t you?”

Midge tried and failed to hide the flash of pain. “Yes, sir. He’s sorry he couldn’t make it.”

“It’s not his fault.” Whitehand’s eyes flicked to the dark green bandana around his neck and tightened, but he seemed neither disappointed nor surprised. “It’s not yours either. These things happen. You eaten today, Lincoln?” Without waiting for the obvious answer, he nodded toward a nearby stewpot. “Sit down. It’s the least we can do for your father. You too.”

“I’m not a mine worker,” Robyn corrected him quietly.

“You’re what, fourteen? Don’t insult me.”

About a hundred feet away, someone tossed a bottle into no-man’s land. It landed nowhere near the SDC guards, but one of them half-raised his shotgun and shouted, “Hey! Watch it! You stay back!”

The man who’d thrown it got to his feet and shot back, “Yeah, come over here and make me! Cowards.”

Whitehand’s jaw tightened; before he could move toward the young man, however, a group of nearby workers had grabbed him and guided him none too gently back to his seat, leaning close and talking quickly. Still, the old man shook his head.

“I’d better go deal with that,” he told them. “We appreciate the support. I meant it, Lincoln, see your friend here gets food in her. That’s an order.”

“Thank you, sir.” Robyn shoved her hair back. “I’m not hungry.”

That almost got a smile from him. “You’re a bad liar is what you are, but you’re a good kid.”

There were only so many times Robyn was willing to turn down an offer of a hot meal, and only so many times anyone could do it without being rude. She let herself be maneuvered near a fire, and if there was still guilt swirling in her stomach at least there was something edible joining it.

She’d pay them back. Maybe she could risk another tundra jaunt, just a short one; they’d probably appreciate some fresh hare. Or penguin, even if it did taste fishy.

“Assholes,” a middle-aged woman was muttering, glaring toward the SDC guards as Robyn and Midge finally came up for air. “They wouldn’t be so cocky if they realized there’s hundreds of us and a few dozen of them.”

“I think they’re starting to figure that out,” the woman next to her—a doe faunus, with dark eyes and delicate white-speckled ears—pointed out reasonably.

“I’ll tell you what I think,” the first woman responded darkly. “I heard they were sending for reinforcements from Atlas. This is going to turn ugly sometime tomorrow, and it won’t be in our favor. If we were smart, we wouldn’t sit around and wait for it when we outnumber them _now."_

“They have _guns,”_ Robyn pointed out.

“For how long?” was the rebuttal. “If we had the element of surprise. You’re armed, don’t think I didn’t notice that. It’d only take a few seconds to get across, and if we all moved fast enough—”

“That’s enough,” a nearby organizer snapped. “Any more of that kind of talk and you’re leaving. We don’t need it here.” He gave the woman a quick up-and-down. “What’s your name? I don’t recognize you.”

“Sylva Pinkerton,” the woman replied, scowling, as she stood up. “I’ll just go ahead and leave, if you all want to be useless cowards.”

Whitehand rejoined the group as she left. He watched the woman carefully until she was well past the barricades, then exchanged a weighted look with the organizer who’d told her off.

It made Robyn’s fur stand on end.

Now that she’d eaten and her brain was working a little faster, she took the time to scan the picket line. For the most part, everything was normal; anyone not sitting down to eat was milling around in semi-organized formations, some carrying signs and most empty-handed. It really didn’t look like a volatile environment.

Which made it very strange that there were _definitely_ more guards on the SDC side than there had been half an hour ago. And even stranger that she hadn’t really registered new ones showing up. And for how reactive they’d been earlier, they now seemed to have found their field discipline. It really wasn’t like the SDC mercs to stand calmly in a line like that, but then there didn’t seem to be anything provoking the occasional taunts from yet another young man, not the same one as earlier, either…

Whitehand tensed as he looked toward the SDC line. Robyn, following his line of sight, was able to pick out the ringleader—oh, however did _that_ slip out, the _commander_ of the security force. “All right,” he murmured. “There hasn’t been any real escalation in days. So just _what_ ungodly reason could there be for Kiera Poole to show up in person at this time of night?”

Careful not to make any sudden movements, Robyn set her tin bowl aside with a nod of thanks to an organizer who was no longer paying her any attention.

Everyone in Mantle, whether you worked the mines or not, knew Poole’s name. She was the head of the Schnee Dust Company’s security division, she greenlit every operation, she’d written the hiring standards, and she was absolutely behind every single one of the coverups.

Combine that, the fact that _way too many_ SDC grunts were starting to look like they were waiting for something, and the really obvious plants in the striker’s ranks…

“Midge,” she said under her breath. “We need to go.”

“Huh?”

“We need to go _right now.”_

Whitehand was already moving, rushing toward another young man at the barricade who had a rock in his hand. 

Robyn activated what little Aura she had left after a day on the tundra as she got to her feet, pulling Midge up after her. _“Now!”_

Whitehand’s metal hand caught the man’s wrist as he wound up to throw at the line of guards, and for a fraction of a second some tension went out of Robyn’s body.

Then from the other end of the line a bottle went sailing over no-man’s land, and Robyn tackled Midge to the ground just as the night exploded with gunfire.

“Go!” Robyn shouted to no one in particular as screams and shouting rose over the weapons fire. Groping behind her, she grabbed Midge’s wrist and hauled him to his feet after her. “Move, _move,_ get out of the light—”

Midge jerked violently out of her grip; against every instinct screaming at her to run, she turned to seize him again and froze.

For a moment the smell of blood and trash and spent Dust vanished; she barely noticed the panicked miners forcing their way past her, close to trampling her underfoot, trying to process the spray of blood and the hole in his head, he was _thirteen—_

And she would join him if she stayed here.

Someone had the presence of mind and kind nature to grab her by the arm as they ran past, yanking her around. Robyn didn’t fight it. For a few seconds she let herself be dragged along with the panicking crowd; but they were only providing impossible-to-miss targets, they needed to—

 _“Scatter!”_ someone shouted behind her. “Split off!”

Robyn didn’t wait to be told twice. She knew this area like a Grimm knew fear; elbowing her way out of the press, she darted to the left, grabbed a drainpipe and skidded around the corner into a narrow alley.

These crowded, too-small apartment complexes always collected treacherous mountains of detritus in the alleyways between buildings. Sometimes trash; but more commonly it was barriers like this, construction materials no one had any more use for, bits of broken scaffolding from maintenance done twenty years ago and metal siding from the gods only knew what. In this case the barrier had built up like a sand dune against a rusted-out dumpster, a sheer drop on the near side but a safe, simple descent if you could get over it.

And Robyn could get over it. It was a very, very good thing she’d mapped this shortcut out years ago; without pausing to think she scrambled up a series of uneven bricks, leapt to grip the underside of the abandoned scaffold, rolled to her feet and vaulted over the edge of the barrier.

The street she landed on was pitch-dark but quiet. The only route here from the direction of the mines was through these inaccessible alleyways; the SDC goons would be chasing and gunning down large groups of people, that was clear enough, and that meant Robyn had at least a solid five minutes to get off the ground and out of any lines of sight from above, and she could wait out the bloodbath.

She was clear and free. The only sound of pursuit was the panicked voices from—

Directly behind her—

And shouting, and intermittent gunshots, getting closer on the street she’d veered off from.

She’d never considered, it had never occurred to her, that breaking off from a pursuit that way with so many people behind her, so obviously knowing where she was heading—

She hadn’t expected them to _follow_ her. And she knew she moved fast; if any of them had even noticed how she’d pulled off her barrier jump, they were hungry and exhausted miners, and odds were very slim any of them would have the specific kind of muscle memory they’d need to follow her. They’d bottlenecked themselves at her heels, there was no way they could have known she was seeking out a blocked exit on purpose, to cut off pursuit... 

_The SDC would be chasing down dense groups._

Robyn was already scrambling back up the barrier before her mind caught up with how stupid that was.

“—had plants,” one thin man was saying hysterically. “We shouldn’t have trusted—”

“Come on!” Robyn yelled, interrupting his hysteria with her own. She hadn’t even considered they’d think she’d led them this way on _purpose._ Elain’s mockery danced in the back of her mind. _Loyalty doesn’t seem like it’s in your blood._ Can’t trust a tricky fox, after all. 

She braced herself on the top of the unstable barrier and hauled the first man up before, ignoring her own panic at the approaching flashes of gunfire, she jumped back down into the alley and laced her fingers together, frantically gesturing the next two forward. One was light enough for her to boost onto the scaffold; the second got a lift from his friend as the small knot of miners figured out the idea. 

They were out of time. 

“There’s safe footing about five feet down,” she said quickly, trying to hurry them along, pulling herself back onto the scaffolding at the rear of the group. “Swing over and drop, swing over and drop, keep moving.” There were only three left including Robyn. She glanced behind them, tail sweeping anxiously from side to side as she turned to look over her shoulder. “Don’t stop and don’t slow down, find somewhere quiet and stay—”

The world went white.

That was all she could ever remember, afterward.

The shotgun blast never registered. She didn’t notice the pain in her legs as buckshot grazed her skin, or the cries of the others around her. Dimly, she was aware of Aura flaring up her arms, oddly beautiful, flickering green before dissolving like snowflakes in the wind. 

But all of that would come back to her later.

In the moment all she noticed was everything going white and very, very quiet.

* * *

Awareness returned to her slowly. She tasted blood. Unfamiliar hands were hauling her over something. Then, without being certain how much time had passed, suddenly she wasn’t moving anymore; the street was wet and dark, freezing cold, there were vague whispers over her but she couldn’t remember how to lift her head…

 _“...have to leave her,”_ she was able to make out through whatever thick, viscous substance was sloshing around in her brain. And then more vague noises, something to the effect of _“...have a choice, she’ll only…”_

Slowly, almost thoughtfully, as if it had taken its time getting here, the pain hit.

 _Oh,_ she thought.

Then she screamed. And she screamed some more. And some more after that. Before long she couldn’t even make that noise come out, she was just doubled over shaking in silent agony.

She could feel something hot and sticky soaking into her clothes where she lay on her side. Carefully, slowly, she pushed herself up on one elbow and reached behind her back, trying to feel for where she’d been hit...

And she felt empty air where she really, really shouldn’t have.

Sucking shallow gulps of air between her teeth and fighting against the feel of white-hot razor wire pressed against her spinal cord, fumbling badly, she reached down to her calf. It took too long, too many attempts at tugging with bloodless fingers; but she managed to unfasten the leather straps holding her knife in place.

Tourniquet, she thought, holding it desperately in her mind as her head swam again. She had to focus on that until it was done.

She managed to wrap the leather, slippery with blood and struggling at the angle, around the base of her tail. Or what was left of—

Robyn clenched her jaw so hard it creaked. Later. She would deal with that later. It would be fine. She didn’t know anything yet.

With difficulty, moving too slow, she slipped a metal arrow free of her wrist quiver and slotted it into place between the leather straps, and began to twist it. She’d never...tried to tourniquet a tail before. She had no way of knowing how tight was tight enough, and was fairly certain that with this much blood loss already, at so awkward an angle, there was no way she’d be able to get it to that point. She twisted the arrow until she physically couldn’t force it around again, then brought the wet ends of the leather straps up to fasten it in place.

It wasn’t going to be enough. 

She knew that, even as she dragged herself and half-crawled into an alcove outside a run-down storefront and collapsed there. She was alone on the unheated streets—buildings down here were all connected to the heating grid, but this wasn’t the city proper, and if you were on the street you were on your own. 

She could barely walk, she’d lost too much blood and she was losing more, her Aura had broken. With the mines down and the SDC storming the crater she couldn’t even hole up and hope she survived until morning, and the odds of anyone coming along who would be willing or able to help her were less than zero. She was probably going into shock. If she didn’t get medical attention in the next few hours, she was going to be Mantle’s latest foxhunting trophy.

And even on a good day, emergency medical care down here was piss-poor to nonexistent.

It was so cold, and she was exhausted and in pain, and it was beyond tempting to close her eyes. Grimly, she pulled another arrow from her quiver and dug it into her palm. If she passed out again like this, she was never waking up.

Not like this, not tonight.

So she had to get up to the city.

Gritting her teeth, fighting hard not to throw up, she managed to lean into the corner of her little alcove and haul herself onto her feet. She could support her weight. Okay. That was a start.

She took a few careful steps, and her knees buckled.

All right. She gripped the grimy bricks for several seconds, taking deep breaths until she could stand again. She could support her own weight but not for very long. Important caveat. Useful.

How _was_ she going to get up to the city?

There _shouldn’t_ be any barrier to her; but with violence breaking out at the SDC strike and blood on the streets, realistically there was no way Mantle City was going to be letting anyone in tonight. Especially a bloodsoaked faunus with no identification, carrying a weapon—Robyn’s bow was her only lifeline, there was no way she was stashing it anywhere and nowhere she could get to if she’d been willing to try.

She looked up, toward the rim of the crater. It was too far to make out much detail; but she could see headlights far above, moving toward the main entrance to the city. Headlights—and, emblazoned on the side of the transports, the mocking white snowflake of the SDC.

Robyn’s eyes glinted in the dark.

* * *

Arms trembling, Robyn crawled slowly and painfully to the edge of the roof.

She had no idea how she’d managed to walk to the district boundary line without collapsing. The memory was a haze of red and white, searing pain and a dreamy numbness that she knew was infinitely more deadly. 

Agony still flickered up her spine every few moments, made worse by the strain of climbing the wall to get here. But this was her only chance. She’d never make it to the wall, let alone anywhere past that, on her own—she’d pass out from the effort and die of exposure even if by some miracle she didn’t get shot by the armed co-driver of every transport.

But this was one of the three fastest routes to the mines. The strike had been over workplace safety in Dust processing; there was a backlog of raw Dust down there, and the SDC had apparently decided that the best thing for it was to ship mass quantities out under cover of night and the mad panic, and take the lower market price as a better deal than getting nothing at all. So at least a third of the trucks would have to come this way. And any that did would have to slow down, almost to a stop, in order to make a sharp turn onto the main road into Mantle City proper.

Conveniently, this turn would be made in the black patch left by a burned-out street lamp. If by burned-out you meant “recently shot with an an arrow”. Robyn was bleeding to death, not _incompetent._ She could hit a glowing target less than twenty feet away, thank you very much.

She would have one shot. She’d already had to let one transport pass; it had been a newer model, a single unified body. Robyn needed one of the older, cheaper transports—a truck cab attached to a transport trailer. Thankfully, tractor-trailers were still much bigger than the sleek military transports, and every appearance was that tonight was about quantity.

She waited until the headlights had passed under her to swing out over the side of the building; this landing had to be as silent as possible. The truck rolled nearly to a stop. She braced her feet against the peeling whitewash, took a deep breath, kicked off, and twisted.

Her vision flickered with the pain as she landed on the roof of the trailer, dropping forward into a crouch and catching herself on the fingers of both hands with the impact. Her tail, reflexively, had flexed to compensate, and she dry-heaved for too many precious seconds as the truck rumbled into motion again. 

She’d made it to the trailer, but that was only half the battle. They’d start passing under street lamps any second, and she would be in full view of anyone higher up the crater. And most of those people had guns.

Dizzy and choosing to ignore that for the time being, Robyn clawed her way toward the cab. There’d be no careful drop vault this time; she couldn’t afford to be visible in the rear window for more than a split second.

In the heartbeat before they entered the glow of the first streetlight, she stepped forward and dropped hard between the cab and the trailer.

It jarred her teeth, if she hadn’t grabbed desperately for the metal siding she would have lost her balance completely; but as the truck shifted gears to continue on its way up the slope, she was hidden and she was on her way. All she had to do was stay conscious.

That was...proving increasingly difficult.

She’d counted on the city sentries being tense and hurried, and let out a sigh of relief in time with the air brakes as she was proven right; the SDC truck was waved through, and all it took was Robyn pressing tight against the back of the cab and closing her eyes to not reflect any light for their attention to be anywhere but the narrow, dark connection between truck and cargo.

So, she was in the city. She’d managed to keep herself awake on the drive up by plotting out her next move. An SDC truck wouldn’t be going to the hospital. In theory, all she really had to do now was get off the truck cleanly; most people in Mantle would be more than happy to call her an ambulance if she stumbled into their place of business and collapsed dramatically on the floor.

But she couldn’t risk that. She was too obviously crater trash, too easily tied to the bloodshed in Mantle, and Atlesian forces might not care that her weapons were legal. She had no identification, either. Maybe her parents had just not gotten a chance to pass it on to anyone who could have given it to her when they died; maybe she never had. Atlas’ healthcare was among the best in the world, certainly the most advanced, and even Mantle hospitals benefited from some of that; but government healthcare required records, and she didn’t have any. 

They’d treat her, if she showed up this injured, but it would mean too many questions. And if she didn’t legally exist before, she sure would when Atlas needed someone to foot the bill. Which just brought everything back around to the fact that if she sought out any official services she was almost guaranteed to end up under arrest…

But she had an idea. Gilbert Whitehand had reminded her. _Everyone_ in the crater knew Polendina’s place. It said a lot when crater trash were telling each other to actively go find an outsider; odds are, if you saw a prosthetic on a mine worker, it had come from Pietro Polendina’s hands, free of charge. Sometimes there were...unfortunate side effects. The Atlas news media could do a lot of twisting, with the unexpectedly high-quality prosthetics worn by the poorest and most vulnerable; Robyn suspected a lot of Atlesians thought mine workers had access to _much_ better medical care than they got in reality. 

None of which was Polendina’s fault. If he was in Mantle this week...he was discreet and kept his confidence, which was more than most Atlesian doctors ever bothered with.

Her head was starting to feel dangerously light.

She counted down street corners and prayed the transport would continue through to the warehouses on the other side of the city. If it turned…

She would cross that bridge when she came to it.

Finally, they hit a red light close enough. Polendina’s office would be barely two blocks behind her. Robyn, feeling nausea and numbness beginning to creep up on her whole body, was desperate to jump down and make for it; but she could not afford to make mistakes now. While the light was red she shrugged out of her ragged jacket and tied it tightly around her waist. It was dark; hopefully, without the mangled mess of her tail out in the open, no one would notice anything wrong.

She watched the walk signal tick down on the side of the road. When the countdown stopped, she shifted her weight toward the edge of the cab.

Finally, she felt the brakes release. In the second and a half before the truck started to move in earnest—the moment she knew the drivers were most likely to be glancing toward a gearshift or just checking the road ahead of them, and not looking idly around or looking into their rearview mirrors—Robyn dropped off the side of the truck and walked away. Quickly, but not hurrying.

She honestly didn’t know what she’d do if they called after her. Run? That was no longer possible. Scream, maybe, but she didn’t have the energy anymore.

Two blocks. She had to make it two blocks.

Her pulse rushed sluggishly in her ears. She wasn’t certain if the waviness of the buildings was distortion from the heating vents or her own head, and wasn’t about to stop and find out.

She’d just spotted the signature sign when the liquid feeling in her knees and the complete nervelessness of her fingers abruptly became impossible to ignore. She had known, ever since she came to in the gutter, that she was going to pass out eventually; she hadn’t realized that there would come a moment where she knew with searing clarity that “eventually” was no longer something she had the luxury of putting off. 

Her body gave her seconds, only, of grim certainty: She could lie down, immediately, or it would lie down for her.

She responded, equally grim, that if she lay down now it would be for good. She was aware as she did so that her body did not care.

There were no other options. She focused on the door, uncertain if she was even still moving as static filled her ears and shadows raced out of the alleyways to blot out her peripheral vision, and then all but what was right in front of her, and then all but the brightest points of the street vents, and then absolutely everything else.

* * *

Robyn woke up the next morning with her head in a heavy, oddly-warm daze. She blinked, tried to sit up—only for her head to spin and for her to fall back against the inclined...hospital bed? That must be it. She was in a room that seemed more like a personal office than a clinic, cluttered and cozy, but the equipment around her was like nothing she’d ever seen. Her clothes had been changed, she was wearing a simple green-and-white tunic, and there was a small tube running into her arm. Ah. That’s probably why she wasn’t in pain.

From somewhere nearby, there was a soft snore.

She turned her head. By her bedside there was an older man slumped in a mechanical walking chair, fast asleep. She had a pretty good idea who he was.

Robyn sat up again, more carefully this time, and cleared her throat. “Doctor Polendina?”

He made a startled noise and sat up so fast that Robyn jumped a little too.

“Oh good, you’re awake,” he said, pushing his glasses up. “Are you feeling alright? Are you in any pain?”

Robyn shook her head. “Not really. This must be some good stuff you’re giving me.” She tried to force a weak smile.

Polendina’s face etched in concern. “What’s your name, dear?”

“Robyn. Robyn Hill.”

He smiled softly. “It’s nice to meet you, Robyn. You can call me Pietro. You gave me quite the fright; if you’d been a few minutes later there’d have been nothing I could have done.”

Robyn suppressed a shiver. “Thanks.”

Pietro’s smile was much warmer this time. “Don’t you worry about anything, you’re going to be alright.”

“Oh. Good.” Robyn sat in awkward silence for a moment, a question that she knew and feared the answer to on the tip of her tongue. “So my...tail?”

Pietro’s face fell. “I’m...so sorry, Robyn, I…”

“Oh.”

The painkiller-induced haze in her mind wasn’t enough to stop an eruption of grief bursting through. Grief for Midge, for everyone else who had died, for her _tail, oh gods her tail was—_

Silently, Pietro put a hand on her shoulder while she wept.

* * *

She stayed like that for a few days, on painkillers, sleeping a lot. Not saying much, and thank the gods that Pietro didn’t ask many questions. He’d asked, tentatively, if she had any parents or caretakers that he could call, and was sad but not surprised when she said no.

At one point he’d had the ABN News on, and Robyn had heard Jaques Schnee’s faux-sympathetic voice as he lamented the _horrible_ violence that broke out, what a _tragedy_ it was, how his sympathies went out to all those who lost loved ones in the rioting—rioting, he actually had the gall to call it _rioting—_ and how he especially lamented the loss of such a beloved community leader as Gilbert Whitehand, what a shame it was he’d been caught in the _crossfire_ as he tried to calm the rioters, what a shame they hadn’t listened to him and refrained from violence—

Robyn was sure that Pietro would ask questions when he saw the enraged tears on her face, the way she was _shaking_ , but instead he just shut the projector off and brought her some hot chocolate.

She thought it might have been about a week before she finally couldn’t stand the concerned tension any more and mumbled something about getting out of his hair soon now that she wasn’t dying, thank you sir.

He blinked, taken aback. “Well,” he said, still surprised but choosing his words carefully. “I can’t stop you, and I wouldn’t try. But you’re not in any condition to wander around by yourself, you know. I’d feel better if I at least knew where you were getting out of my hair _to_. You certainly don’t get in the way around here,” he added with a good-natured chuckle. “Quietest teenager _I’ve_ ever met.”

 _That_ was a new one, but Robyn didn’t tell him as much. 

“Mind,” Pietro commented to himself. “You _have_ been sedated pretty hard.”

Any other day, that would have been enough to make Robyn at least smile.

Whatever her face did instead, Pietro still looked encouraged. “There you go. So, come on now. You want to move on, that’s more than fair.” He gestured around. “It’s not the most entertaining venue in the city. Where next, then? Maybe I can help you. I’ve kind of enjoyed having you around the place, honestly.”

Robyn sighed. “Home,” she said. She could stay in the city; it was warmer, if nothing else. But she didn’t have nearly as many contacts here, didn’t know the streets or the players or the unspoken social rules nearly as well, at least not yet. “I suppose. Or maybe not. There’s...not a lot left for me in the crater, when I think about it.”

Pietro blinked in mild surprise. “You’re a lower districts girl! Well, whatever happened to you the other night, I’m glad you were up here when it did. Hate to think of you alone in that awful place.”

Robyn was apparently silent for slightly too long.

‘Mild surprise’ gave way to open astonishment. “How in the world...you got all the way here, by yourself? From the base of the crater? With an injury like that...I couldn’t believe you made it here across the _district,_ let alone…!”

Robyn shrugged. Pretty sure she wasn’t fooling him, she tried for half a smile. “What can I say, Doc? I’m a freerunner.”

He actually laughed through his shock at that. “Well,” he managed. “I’ve met several of Mantle’s finest over the years, Miss Hill, and I don’t believe most of them could do what you did. I don’t want to ask what…” He sighed. “No, I suppose I can guess. I suppose you were...in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Just like the rest of those poor people.”

Robyn felt a faint, phantom wrongness as she tried and failed to sweep her tail into her lap. “I was stupid,” she whispered.

“You don’t strike me as the type to do things foolishly,” was the gentle response.

“I…” Robyn wasn’t even certain why she was saying any of this, except that Pietro was worried and had such a reputation for being trustworthy. And a few days ago, when she’d gotten enough of her Aura back to test out her Semblance, he’d been telling the truth when he promised not to report her to the authorities without her permission. “I didn’t expect anyone to _follow_ me. I was trying to lose the SDC, I found a barricade to hop, and then a bunch of idiots followed me into a dead end without knowing how to get out so—I _know_ it was stupid,” she said, defensive. “I know I shouldn’t have gone back for them, I don’t know what I expected to happen, all right?”

“Oh, _Robyn,”_ he breathed.

“I wasn’t thinking.” She ran her fingers through her hair. “I know this is my own fault. You get hurt down there when you act like an idiot.”

Pietro fixed her with a skeptical look for several long seconds before humming and turning away to make himself a cup of tea.

“It sounds to me,” he mused, “like you were acting every inch the young Huntress, without any training at all. I know any academy headmaster in the world would be proud.”

Robyn surprised herself with the strength of her snort. “You don’t have to _insult_ me, Doctor.”

He made a face and sighed heavily. “You’re right,” he acknowledged. “Forgive me. I’d...forgotten. If you grew up down in the crater...but you know, there’s more to being a Huntress than being…”

“A soulless dog of the military?” Robyn suggested with a smile. “Murderous automaton? Let me know if I’m getting close.” He didn’t disagree; but he looked so downhearted that she relented a little. The old-fashioned ideal of a Huntress was storybook stuff, but she knew what he’d meant. “I know there are good ones, Doctor. They just...don’t come to Mantle.”

He looked up at her and arched an eyebrow.

“They _could.”_

* * *

Pietro’s office felt...different, this time.

It wasn’t the first time Robyn had dropped by in the past eleven months. She wasn’t too proud, in really rough spots, to accept Pietro’s earnest offers of help with food and a place to spend the night while she focused on really training her skills. But she’d avoided doing so as much as possible. Pietro had a big heart, but there were too many people in Mantle in more desperate need than Robyn was these days.

And he wasn’t near the crater. Elain Teale could keep her out of the western half of sector eight, but Robyn wasn’t going to be run out of her home.

Even if she was preparing to abandon it...temporarily. If everything went well.

She could have done this last part at the Mantle public library, and had planned to. But...well. This much, she felt like Pietro Polendina should be part of. It would make him happy, he was in Mantle this week, and she really did need access to a computer.

The Academy application portal was...actually reassuring in its simplicity. Unlike so much in Atlas, there was no facial recognition, no fingerprinting, no need for official identification and history. The Huntsman academies—according to the propaganda, sorry, _recruitment flyers_ that Pietro had enthusiastically printed off for her a year ago—had traditionally avoided any such things. Practically speaking, it was because the best fighters often came from out-Kingdom and blocking them from training to kill Grimm would be incredibly stupid. But she’d found video of a very pretty speech by Headmaster Ozpin of Beacon about the ideals behind the tradition—that you would be judged for your actions, and nothing else.

Mostly she figured it was the first thing.

She’d considered Beacon, specifically for its style of operation and its founding ethics. But despite Pietro’s assurances, Robyn was aware that she had a cheaply mass-produced weapon, a self-taught Aura, a non-combat Semblance, and no formal training. Beacon attracted intermediate-age tournament winners and top-tier students from competitive combat academies all over the world.

It wasn’t insecurity; Robyn was _good_ and she intended to show it. But with the kind of combat focus that the students Beacon attracted usually specialized in, the odds were stacked against her from the start. She’d rather focus all her energy on applying to a school she was much more likely to be accepted into. And...honestly, she didn’t want to go so far from Mantle.

This way, she could always come back.

_Personal Information. Name: Hill, Robyn. Date of birth—_

“Doc,” she asked without looking up, “what’s today’s date?”

“October 3rd,” he answered.

Robyn smiled a little to herself as she filled that date in with an appropriate year. “Happy seventeenth birthday to me,” she said under her breath.

That brought her to the next box.

She stared at it for a long, long time.

She had decided on this a while ago, but now that it came time to commit she couldn’t help hesitating. It was...undeniable, that there were practical advantages to it. She’d experienced them plenty while navigating Mantle over the last year. And if she was about to sign on to trapping herself in the Atlesian bureaucracy for four straight years, she would need all the help she could get. She knew she couldn’t be the first person to do this, but...well.

It still felt like she was betraying a part of herself that was no less integral for being harder to see.

Robyn closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and opened them again.

_Species: Human._


End file.
